R.I.P.: Venetia Phair (she named Pluto at age 11)

[bananas]

http://blogs.discovery.com/twisted_physics/2009/05/rip-venetia-phair.html



May 15, 2009
R.I.P.: Venetia Phair

Fans of everyone's favorite erstwhile planet, Pluto, mourned the passing on May 5th of Venetia Phair, nee Burney, at the age of 90. Phair gave the little pseudo-planet its name way back when in 1930, when it was first discovered by Clyde Tombaugh. She was only 11 then -- Tombaugh was merely 24 -- and living in Oxford, England, with her grandfather, a retired librarian at the famed Bodleian. She had no idea her name would continue to stump avid Trivial Pursuit players 50+ years later.

It's a sweet story, actually, and has nothing to do with the Disney character, Pluto (also introduced in 1930). Her grandfather, Falconer Madan, read her the news story of the planet's discovery over breakfast on the morning of March 14, 1930, which mentioned the planet had yet to be named. Young Venetia was fascinated at the time with the planets in the solar system. She told BBC News in 2006, "At school we used to play games in the university park, putting... lumps of clay at the right distance from each other to represent the distances of the planets from the sun."

She also loved Greek and Roman mythology. In fact, at the time of the discovery, she was reading The Age of Fable by Thomas Bullfinch -- clearly a most precocious child. She told her grandfather she thought the new planet should be named Pluto, after the Roman god of the underworld. (The first two letters are also the same as the initials of Percival Lowell, who with William Pickering first predicted the existence of planet past Neptune.) It helps to have good connections: Madan's brother had suggested that the moons around Mars be named Phobos and Deimos in 1878, so naming celestial objects kind of ran in the family.

Madan also knew Herbert Hall Turner, a professor of astronomy at Oxford, and dropped a note for the professor with Venetia's suggestion. Turner telegraphed the proposed name to the Lowell Observatory. And on May 1, Pluto became the official name of the ninth planet in the solar system. Venetia's grandfather rewarded her with five-pound note.

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[pansypoo53219]

1. cool

kids were better edjumicated back then. i got a 1912 edition of the 'book of knowledge' set. about 20+ books filled with interesting stuff. even found a story about democritus, a philosopher i discovered reading my 1891 encyclopedia set. old EBs are awesome.

[monmouth]

2. Remember back when you asked a question, the usual answer was

"look it up." We had a set of those books too, my sons loved going through them and memorizing trivia..